Electric car maker Tesla Motors is continuing its swift stock market trajectory this week. On Tuesday the company opened up at $ 101.55, crossing over the $ 100 mark for the first time. It’s now trading up around $ 110.05 per share this afternoon.
TSLA data by YCharts
With Tesla’s first quarterly profit in the company’s decade-long history last quarter, Tesla proved to skeptics that it’s been able to transition from a niche electric car maker into a more mainstream auto company. While Tesla will no doubt face hurdles as it offers two more models in the coming years, the company is far less risky than it was back in Fall of 2012, before it has cranked up its Model S production into 400 cars per week.
Over the past year, the amount of short interest (the amount of shares that investors have sold short, expecting the stock to drop in price) in Tesla has been nothing short of remarkable — it was 40 percent of available shares as recently as April 19. But now as Tesla’s stock price has been rising these short sellers have been forced to buy more shares, causing the stock to rise even more.
The result has been a massive three-fold jump in Tesla’s stock price from the $ 30′s a year ago to over $ 100 today. Tesla went public in the Summer of 2010 at $ 17 per share. For the Tesla teams’, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s, ambitions, it’s only the beginning.
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